Entoloma

Montañez, Diego, Noordeloos, Machiel E., Rodríguez, Olivia, Vargas, Ofelia & Guzmán-Dávalos, Laura, 2016, Notes on the genus Entoloma (Basidiomycota, Agaricales) in two volcanic areas of Jalisco, Mexico, Phytotaxa 277 (3), pp. 211-236 : 213

Entoloma subgenus Rhodopolia Kokkonen

This subgenus contains a fairly large group of taxa, which are often hard to distinguish morphologically. Important diagnostic characters are found in the pileipellis, where structure and pigmentation are used to delimitate species ( Largent 1994, Noordeloos 2004). There are many species described in the literature on morphological grounds, and furthermore, the results of some molecular studies indicate that potentially there are many genetic entities, which do not per se coincide with the morphospecies ( Kokkonen 2015).

Most likely all Rhodopolia are mycorrhizal, as opposed to the rest of the genus Entoloma . Host preference and host range may well be of great importance for species delimitation. Members of Rhodopolia occur in a wide range of habitats and climate zones. It is particularly dominant in many forest types, from Mediterranean to arctic and alpine habitats ( Noordeloos 2004). In Jalisco, we found the Quercus-Pinus forest remarkably rich in Rhodopolia species; six of them are presented in this paper.